Website Building

Our last project for Digital Communication's class is to build a website! 

Strategy:

As of right now, my strategy is to get a job and begin working after college for a few years, and perhaps go to graduate school after making enough money to pay for graduate school. Therefore, my website's objective will be to attract employers. Of course, I will need a couple of more internships to build my resume before landing an actual job post-grad, and therefore this website will first be showing the skills that I have developed and learned from past internship experiences as well as from my classes here at Furman. I also intend on looking for jobs overseas in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Shanghai - and therefore I may add Chinese text to let employers know that I am bilingual. It is important to note that I am looking for but not limited to public relations firms, magazines, or advertising companies.

Scope:

Things that I will need in order to brand myself include -

• Contact form (this will include email and phone number)
• Widget that will link to my Facebook page
• Will create a Photography section page that will showcase the photography work I have done for City Weekend magazine in Shanghai and for The Paladin Newspaper
• I will my include my resume that has all my past experiences 
• Because I am possibly attempting to land a job at a magazine, I may also create a section on the website for writing samples
• About me section that will talk about my background and history that I feel like will probably be what sets me apart from everyone else, but won't be too extremely lengthly. Will keep it short and concise. 

5 Inspirations:

I love this simple layout, with four sections neatly on the top, against  a single solid yet eye-catching and bold color. I guess you could call me a minimalist. I also love the idea of the main background showcasing photography skills. It's a show, not tell kind of concept.

Again, I love the simplicity of these little icons (if that's what you call it! :O) at the end of the website that don't distract and are easy to click on, with all the icons placed neatly one after another.

I love this website! It is so cool, so clean and so fresh. 

I particularly like the idea of the very simple logo in the center against the beautiful landscape.

If we have learned anything from our last couple of readings, it is that we want the website to be user-friendly and I believe this website has achieved that. When you scroll down the page, it has a "scroll icon" on the left that isn't too distracting. Also, a little bar at the bottom appears with the company's address and other information.

Website Link: http://www.seattlecidercompany.com/

I also really like this website that does online marketing campaigns and how they show off their past experiences with these three pictures:

Websites

    

   In this week's reading of Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works, Redish talks about the important aspects of what websites do to attract their audience. Obviously there are websites that are geared towards different types of people and interests - female, male, sports, music, etc. I went through the list of websites that I typically visit a couple times a day which is really anything from Facebook to different blogs to Pinterest to Facebook. In the end, I went to 8tracks.com, which is an online radio where you can search for music by genre and also create playlists to share with friends. Apparently, according to my sister, this website was like, so last year(ha ha) but I still love it anyways.

One of the main things I got out of Redish's reading was that it is so important to know your audience. For websites like Amazon or something super general, the demographics and age groups and stuff are anywhere from teenagers to people in their 60s and 70s (i'm guessing). But anyways, the demographics for 8tracks.com is pretty much teenagers and people in their early to late twenties, maybe even thirties. You can tell this by the names of the playlists that people upload (i.e uuuuuuuh yeah or "if we were a movie"). 



The point is, this internet online radio is so successful because of how simplistic the website is. As Redish points out, "all of us interpret what we read in light of our own knowledge and experiences." Literally, there are only so many buttons on the home page. There's Explore, which gives you a variety of genres, then theres Login and Signup. It's a complete no-brainer. 

Redish even pointed this out through these cartoon drawings of people with bubbles of what people might say. Literally all of them say the same thing just in different ways - that they want efficiency. Whoever created this website knew it would most likely attract this age-group of teenagers/young-adults whatever you want to call them, and knew that we are probably the biggest age group who would really not want to spend the time trying to figure out how to navigate to places and stuff!

Another thing that I think this site does really well is the fact that they use a lot of visuals without being overwhelming. I may be biased when I say that their use of visuals is really good because I am a visual person, and that is what attracts me first. Every playlist basically has a picture, very instagram-y/hipster-y which is the type of people that this website is obviously serving. 

User Experience

In this week's reading, Jesse James Garrett talks about the everyday gadgets and tools that we use that help us pick up the pace and make things easier for us. What people don't realize is that the hardest part of making these tools are the "user experience." People are attracted to things that spell it out for them, essentially, because that is the whole point of technology - to make things move along faster for them without having to do a whole lot to get there. This is his ultimate definition of the "user experience":

"Not about the inner workings of a product or service, it is about how it works on the inside, where a person comes into contact with it."

Another interesting thing that he mentions is the "form follows function" concept, where the design of the product is dictated by its functionality. An example I can think off the top of my head are like the Android phones versus the Apple iPhone 5's, versus Blackberry's (if people even use them anymore?) I personally have used all three of them, and have found that they are good and bad in different aspects. For instance, the Android is probably appearance-wise the most appealing, as it is very futuristic-feeling (hence why Apple probably felt the need to add the somewhat unnecessary fingerprint-scan security function on their latest phones). However, I didn't stick with the Android that long despite its pretty exterior, and even interior because it was so complicated to figure out. I couldn't navigate to even the simplest things and that made me extremely frustrated! The iPhone I would say is probably the most user-friendly, because everything is literally right there on the screen, and its simple designs take you anywhere you need to go.

                                        

                                    

In Chapter 2 of The Elements of the User Experience, Garrett talks about the user-experience I believe specifically in the case of online-shopping. Now, I am definitely no stranger to this experience, but when I think about it, there are only a specific number of websites that I am actually willing to buy from. For instance, there is a website called Taobao.com, which is essentially the Chinese version of Ebay. You can buy things, sell things, and you can even talk to the store owners or customers that are interested in selling you or buying your products! What I love about this particular website, is that when you search for a product, it gives you links to similar items at the top, or it helps you narrow your search. I think it's actually a pretty smart marketing tactic, in that it makes you want to buy all these things that you maybe wouldn't have thought about buying before. I haven't really experimented too much with buying stuff on ebay, and I generally don't like to do so because I know that they do a different thing where they auction it and there is only a limited amount of time. I also don't like that it shows you how many people are viewing this item, because it adds on so much unnecessary pressure! The whole point of online shopping should be fast and easy, so that you can do it in a short amount of time and not have to worry about the technical difficulties.

Generous Garden Project Video

Online Editing

    In this week's reading, Carroll talks about the importance of mastering online editing and all the many components that people tend to forget that differ greatly from editing other types of publications. One of the things that he explained is one of the most important things to remember is the appearance aspect. When novels, books, essays, or other types of writings are published, the appearance aspect obviously wouldn't be as important because most of what the viewer sees is merely text, other then the front cover. In my own experiences, when I created this blog, my own personal blog, and a group blog for another communications class (mediaandsustainability.blogspot.com) I realized that I was definitely more caught up in what the layout and styling aspect of the blog would be instead of the actual content. One good thing about online writing though is that I feel like I can be myself more have more freedom and not bound to specific boundaries or structures in writing that I would have to submit to a professor.

   On page 121, Carroll talks about how to edit a text chunk in a way that is more pleasing to people and essentially more "readable." As we have learned from the article written by Carr who questions our intelligence with this fast-paced development of the digital age, people tend not to care too much for actually reading, or at least not lengthly texts when they are reading online. Hence, Carroll says the best way to be informative about a subject, but at the same time grabbing peoples attention, is by taking advantage of bullet points. It's funny because this reminded me of BuzzFeed which I absolutely enjoy using as a source of procrastination everyday. BuzzFeed covers everything from funny pictures, cute gifs, somewhat "informative" videos, to actual long and lengthly articles. I don't know how many people actually go on that website and actually sit down and read those lengthly articles, but I know for certain that I am not one to do so. Though I once enjoyed reading for pleasure, my attention span is no longer the same.

   Anyway, I'm starting to stray a little off topic. Another thing that stuck with me as I was reading this was how many more people are involved in the process of online editing. For most websites, there are so many tabs on the website that link people to different things such as on news websites there would be different categories (sports, international, political, etc) and websites such as buzzfeed or reddit would have categories such as (new, entertainment, life, etc). All of these components have to be updated every single day. Most people probably don't even check those websites every single day (actually, I probably do...) but there are still a good few that do, so it is those peoples jobs who created the website to make sure they still have all these viewer's attention. 

Just as I finished this blog post..I came across a link a friend had posted on Facebook with a funny gif! Thinking it was probably buzzfeed or some other silly website like that, I clicked on it, only to find out that it was a link to Huffington Post! Weird..it's an article about personal hygiene (not surprisingly) but it was surprising that they are using gifs now!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/08/personal-hygiene-facts_n_4217839.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular#slide=2276894

Point of View

       Douglass and Harnden discuss the importance of the three types of POV's : first, second, and third person and how that relates to literature, and then to film. Overall, generally I feel like all three types of POV's are much easier to convey in literature than in film. As an ex-English major wannabe, I've taken dozens of writing courses to improve on short story and creative writing, as well as poetic skills. If I've taken anything away from any of these courses, is that it is so incredibly important for the author to include details, details and more details. With text, obviously anything above a first or second grade level book wouldn't have pictures, therefore the more there is a need for the author to essentially spell it out to the audience. If one character is jealous of another character, an amateur author (such as me!) would probably write something like, "she was jealous of the way he looked at her friend Maria." According to my peers and professors though, a better way of writing a sentence in which "she" was jealous of "him" in the way that he looked at Maria, would be something like "She couldn't help but feel crushed as she watched him gawk adoringly at Maria." Or something like that. My point is, a lot of that would be so much easier if say, in a movie, the jealous female lead here would be able to convey that in her facial expressions. Which also makes it harder for her as well, as it would be weird to caption somewhere in that scene "she was jealous."

          Anyway, enough of my ranting. Another thing that I noticed as I was reading this was the idea of the second-person perspective, and how Douglass and Harnden propose that this technique is used as means of addressing the audience in "you" form. As in "here is the product that you should buy," or "here is how you do this!" In my Intro to Mass Comm class, we had recently just talked about advertising and how a lot of billboards or commercials will address the public audience as "you," which is a strategy to make anyone that is watching feel like they especially went out of their way to send them that message, when in reality it's just for anyone. Recently (and embarrassingly...), I started, or really I should say attempted, the Insanity program. Shaun T, the director and creator of the program that also leads all the work outs in the weekly videos, addresses the customer as "you." I thought about my own experiences with the way that he addressed "me" as a consumer while I was attempting to follow along his ridiculously intense work outs. Not that I didn't realize he wasn't actually addressing me, I do have to admit as I was working out, I was so consumed in following the steps that it didn't really dawn on me that it was just a strategy so that consumers would feel like he was engaged with them and keeping it personal. Though I now do feel a little cheated, I do feel like it is a smart and strategic move in terms of marketing.

Visual Storytelling

     In this week's reading, Osgood and Hinshaw talks about the process of making and producing a video, specifically the importance of editing. This was so exciting to me as literally I've seen pretty much every episode of my favorite show Friends, yes, all 236 episodes of the 10 seasons that aired. Of course I watch like a trillion of other shows religiously as well (how i met your mother, big bang theory, new girl, etc) but in light of this being the first show that got me into essentially replacing life with television, I decided to use the show as my inspiration for examples of this reading.

      One of the most important things that Osgood and Hinshaw touched on was this idea of a montage, which Friends uses, as most sitcoms do, in the beginning of the show for their introduction before the actual show begins. What I never really paid attention to before is that the way that the producers filmed these actors and actresses and positioned them on screen was very strategic, in that it had to follow the rhythm of the song I'll be There For You by the Rembrandts. It follows it so closely down to when the text "Friends" come on screen, to when the actors open the umbrellas, and finally at the last minute when Monica turns off the lamp at the end of the song, in perfect harmony as the singer sings his last word.

Later, Osgood and Hinshaw talk about Continuity and the many different types including physical and technical. Immediately I thought about the scene in Mean Girls that I was watching (for the upteenth time!) with a friend, where Janis Ian and Damien watch a horror movie while Cady is at someone's Halloween party. I love this scene because Cady walks into the room they are watching the movie in, all decked out in her "runaway corpse bride" or something creepy costume, right as Janis and Damien's horror movie is at a scene where something terrifyingly suspenseful is supposed to happen. Anyways, my friend pointed out that in the first scene as Cady walks in, Damien throws up his bowl of popcorn in the air, obviously making all the popcorn spill out of it. In the cut following, his bowl is all of a sudden filled with a fresh bowl of popcorn again.

Gestalt: Psychological Closure

       This week's reading by Zettl: "The Two Dimensional Field: Forces Within the Screen" was particularly interesting to me as he talks about a variety of visual optical illusions. In the section where he talks about vertical versus horizontal, he mentioned that we as people have "applied" it to our civilization. The most obvious example of course is the architecture around us. Why are some buildings horizontal and why are some vertical? He claims that this is because horizontal images "suggest calmness, tranquility and rest," whereas vertical images suggest "dynamic, powerful, and exciting." I never noticed it, oddly enough as someone who grew up in a huge city with gigantic skyscrapers everywhere. But if I were to apply what he was saying about vertical versus horizontals, it definitely seems to me that houses, for instance are obviously horizontally shaped and generally flatter surfaces than say, big corporate office buildings. 

   But anyways enough about that. Although I'm not a psychology major, I find it absolutely fascinating, especially during the part where the author talks about this idea of psychological closure, which is called gestalt, a german word. At first it was kind of hard for my mind to wrap around what exactly he meant by this, as his definition was puzzling. He defines it as "a perceptual whole that transcends its parts." To break it down, I think the main concept is that the bigger picture as a whole is more important than the "sum of its parts," and he also says that our brains naturally fill in the gaps.  With this combination of psychology and visual art, I started googling examples of this and came across how gestalt can be applied and even used to enhance photographs. Photography is one of my favorite hobbies and interests, so naturally I was immediately drawn to this idea. With this particular image, this photographer only captured a close-up image of the top of what appears to be color pencils. Although you can't see the rest of the pencils, you know what they are because well, we've probably all been using them since kindergarten - so naturally therefore you put the missing pieces together.

In light of our next assignment that is going to be a video, I thought I would look up some examples of this concept, gestalt, in film. I came across so many that I wanted to share, but I thought this advertisement for Baskin Robbins in South Korea was hilarious!! All jokes aside though, I thought their use of gestalt was actually somewhat effective as well! 

Podcast!

Sports Media Podcast

Perception

In part 3 of Virillo's Open Sky, he talked about perception and how it can be deceiving, and proceeds to raise an important question: "Are we free, truly free, to choose what we see?" (95) Virillo claims that we are in fact, "clearly not" but at the same time, reasonably he also defends the idea that we are not actually obliged or forced against our will to see what we see as well. I personally don't believe that we are obligated, as human beings, to see anything that we don't want to see. I guess it also depends on what he means by the actual things that we see. Is he referring to crime? poverty/beggars/homeless people/etc? General sights that, to society, has taught us are not necessarily the most pleasing to the eye? It seems to me, that he is almost insensitive in saying that we don't have the freedom to see what we see. Some things are just a part of life that are inevitable and we cannot avoid, so we might as well embrace it. Or maybe even change the sights that you don't want to see. Within reason, of course. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't believe that anyone really has the power to make us see what we don't want to see.

In From Sexual Perversion to Sexual Diversion, it actually made me quite sad to read about how people are deliberately coming up with ways that can actually replace human interaction. Call me old-schooled, but I just don't really believe that physical interaction can be that easily substituted, and is kind of insulting if anyone would actually think that some kind of technology in replacement of me, is fulfilling, or worse, better than me! I suppose I could see the appeal with couples doing long-distance relationships, I suppose it would be better than nothing, and maybe even it would eliminate temptation of cheating. But at the same time, I feel like someone in a committed relationship shouldn't need some kind of technology to fulfill their desires, to stay committed. But nevertheless, in the midst of trying to fathom Virillo's argument, I wanted to knwo what kind of technology is really being pushed out there for these types of situations. I came across this "blue tooth hand held" device introduced at a Japanese tech expo. Turns out, one of their biggest mobile carriers, DoCoMo came up with what they called "Taion Heart" shaped like a plastic heart.

Here's their description of this device: "When given a squeeze, the device would measure the rate of your heart and the tightness of your grip. This info would be transmitted to your partner’s phone, and then to his or her matching device, which would get warm and light up into a variety of colors — while vibrating according to your pulse of course." 

And more: “Couples can use it by each person holding the heart in bed as they sleep,” DoCoMo told the press. Edgar Allen Poe would be so into this."

Source: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/tech-support-technology-for-getting-really-intimate-in-a-long-distance-relationship

Law of Least Action

Law of Least Action.

      I'm sorry, but what?? Is this what our society has come down to? That we are so lazy that we can't even physically take a couple of minutes in our day to open the blinds, turn on the lights, little things in our houses that doesn't even require us to leave the house? That's just unacceptable. People blame US's high obesity rate on the fact that they serve food with way too much sugar in it. After reading this chapter, in particular the section where he mentions "Law of Least Action,"I beg to differ for obvious reasons...not that I'm particularly active or anything, but it definitely isn't encouraging me to get my butt off the bed to hear that they're finding ways so that I don't even ever have to leave it anymore. With communication though, obviously there are perks to not having to hand deliver everything. Although I will say it really isn't quite as sentimental when you get an email or message on Facebook, as opposed to a handwritten letter or postcard. Think about it. Someone was actually thinking about you, with the intent of putting effort into whatever they were writing, then had to go through the trouble of mailing it. All of that takes a lot of effort. Today I actually did receive a postcard from a friend studying abroad in Germany which totally would have been different if she had Facebook messaged me, and it totally made my day.

     I also found it particularly interesting on page 57, when he talks about Shinohora's notion that "the city of the future will express the beauty of confusion." This is oddly profound to me, in an almost eerie way. I keep thinking back to the movie IRobot from years ago and how the robot eventually becomes evil or something like that, and Will Smith has to fight them off. Especially when Virillo then says, "I am on the other hand, quite convinced that it will in the near future illustrate the tragedy of the fusion of the 'biological' and the 'technological.'" I'm not too sure what he means by that, but perhaps it isn't always a bad thing. Perhaps technology can make the biological more powerful, but i guess then again in those make-believe action movies it always seems that some greedy villain finds a way to make himself more powerful using technology, and then using his newfound power to disrupt the once quiet and peaceful community/village. Maybe this isn't really the same thing (if at all), but I know that those with severe back issues can have spinal surgery, replacing the bone with metal. Which is sort of technology and biological fusion. Sort of.

Open Sky: Part I

         After reading and re-reading again Part I of Open Sky, it seems to me that what Virillo is trying to make a case out of, is simply that we as human beings are moving too fast. He implies this in several different examples, complete with the definition of literal speed which is velocity. One of the things that stuck out to me when reading this was when he mentioned "The urbanization of real space is thus being overtaken by this urbanization of real time which is, at the end of the day, the urbanization of the actual body of the city dweller." It made me think of some computer software program thing called Second Life that my Intro to Comm professor mentioned, which is essentially designed for people to live "digitally," sort of like your playing sims but actually believing you are the character you choose in the program. To me, that is really sad. No judgement or anything (okay maybe a little...) but you're not really living life if your living through a machine. For someone who is handicap/disabled, there is definitely something appealing I could see, as they don't have the same abilities that normal people do and can't function the same way.

         Things definitely got more interesting when he talked about the debate between Auguste Rodin and Paul Gsell, and how the sculptor said that "No, it is art that tells the truth and photography that lies, for in reality time does not stand still." But wouldn't you be able to argue the same thing about art? What people paint, or sculpt or anything art-related for that matter, is capturing an image. By committing the act of capturing, isn't that considered "a moment frozen in time?" Virillo then, compares all of that with videos, which of course is where time does not stand still and is in fact constantly moving. I thought it was kind of a unique perspective to say that the transition from photography to video is essentially similar to that of the transition from daylight to electricity. Never thought about it in that way before.

         Thinking about the transition of art -> photography -> video, then I thought about what the next big thing could be. In relation to Virillo's whole obsession with speed/velocity, I thought about stop-motion videos, which I think are incredibly fascinating. A friend first told me about it when we were applying to universities, and she had decided to make a stop motion video of her experience as a track runner in high school. I don't have her video but I went on youtube and looked up some pretty cool post it stop -motion video.

How Greenville Gives Back to the Community

             Generous Garden Project   

Video:

The first picture I chose to edit were these rows of plants in the Aquaponic's center. I knew immediately what I had to do to fix this image, which is basically to increase the contrast, in order for each plant to stand out more. I also wanted the leaves of the plants to be more apparent and obvious so I lightened them a little as well.

                                                 Before:                                              

              

After:

         

This is a picture of parsley, which is a type of vegetable that they also grow in the aquaponic's center, pretty much all year round I believe. Although the before and after pictures don't look too much different, I wanted to be able to showcase the name of the vegetable, which I did by making the "parsley" stick/sign more obvious/clear. The second row of leaves are also much more clear in the after picture then the before. 

Before:

         

After:

        

What I didn't know previously about Generous Garden Project is that they also work with a lot of big corporations that donate things like mowed grass, which they use as compost for plants. Since GGP is all about "hands-on" teaching farming, they also believe that it should start at a young age. This is a little garden, sponsored by the company General Electrics, where GGP invites young children that are mostly elementary school aged to learn the basics about organic farming. Because this was such a big part of what they do, I really wanted to make the image brighter as the sun was shining down on it, to promote the adorable paintings on the fence!

Before:

           

After:

    

Usually I wouldn't just take a picture of grass, because I mean I feel like it's a pretty cheap shot, not very original, it's everywhere, and frankly it's not even that attractive! But I felt the need to, because when Anthony, the owner of GGP was giving me a tour, he literally grabbed a handful of the mowed grass to emphasize the fact that they really put every single scrap of anything really to use, as a resource for farming. I don't know much about farming, but I thought it was cool that these big corporations actually come in every few months to donate massive amounts of grass, which GGP can use to its advantage efficiently. Since this object was so close up, I wanted to emphasize each of the pieces of grass so that people's eyes immediately become sucked into the image of the grass (wow that sounds so weird)

Before:

        

After:

Well since the whole GGP project was essentially designed for volunteers to grow crops and give them to the needy, I thought it was only appropriate to take a wide screen ish shot of their garden. Which, fyi, I really didn't do it justice, the garden is beautiful! I did the best I could by brightening up the image by changing the contrast, as well as in the "color variations" tool, I took advantage of the handy dandy tool "Lighten" to just make all the plants look all the more fresh and apparent.

Before:

After:

The Given and the New

In Kress & VanLeeuwen's Reading Images, they talk about the idea of how everything visual comes with a "given" and a "new," and how in different types of media such as advertisements in magazines, interviews, books or whatever - there is this idea that people purposefully place things that people know on the left side and "new" information on the right side. When I read this, I felt like it was pretty obvious for things such as advertisements, but I was a little skeptical (maybe a lot skeptical...) about how they said painters back in the day such as Rembrandt used this technique in his paintings. This reminded me of when I took IB in highschool, and how our teachers emphasized certain themes or symbols in the book. For instance, they would rant on and on about how the curtains in the book were the color blue, and how the author uses it as a hidden theme to express depression and sadness. So that was my little stance on how I felt about that...
As usual, I wanted to prove these guys wrong about their theory. But after flipping through and looking at my Introduction to Mass Communication's textbook The Media of Mass Communication by John Vivian, I thought perhaps there was indeed, some truth in the "Given" and "New" thing regarding the layout. On page 176, the random page that I am now flipped to is actually an example!



On the left side of the page is a picture of the man, who although not everyone may know who he is (Marc Anderssen), its still a picture/familiar name that people may have heard in passing or something. On the other side, is full text, depicting who this man is and other information about his accomplishments and his involvement within the media industry. That, I suppose, would count as the "Given" and "New" thing, where the given is the name/picture of the man, and the new are long detailed explanations of his character and life accomplishments. As someone who merely skims through much of long text, I don't believe I've ever really taken a moment to analyze/appreciate (?) the layout of textbooks. Perhaps I'll take a better look next time when I'm flipping the pages of Cosmo or People or something...yay guilty pleasures!

Viewers Make Meaning

     This week's reading of Viewers Make Meaning for me was really hard, in the sense that there were so many arguments that Sturken & Cartwright made within this 30 page chapter. I thought it was particularly interesting that they made that notion of how companies use advertisements to target audiences, to make you feel like you are personally being addressed even though it is to a wide selection of people. It made me think of one time in high school when my social studies teacher was trying to teach us just what S & C were talking about - how ads sometimes use sex appeal in order to entice readers, subconsciously. The ad I can't find anymore, but basically when you looked up close, the model's long and super shiny hair was altered in a way that made it looked like it was forming an "S" shape, and other objects/props in the scene, when looked up close, looked like they were forming the letters "E" and "X" respectively. At the time, the innocent church-goer me thought it made no connection to marketing whatsoever, rather that it just happened to be an optical illusion not intended specifically that way.

   I began researching online on this idea of advertisements as a form of manipulation towards people, and I came across this website that had an entire page with dozens of examples of just that. For the most part, most of the examples they came up with very self explanatory in that they were obvious in the type of audience they were trying to appeal to, but then I came across one on my favorite show, Friends. Key words here are, "my favorite show," and as a tv junkie I obviously had to stop and take a look at what this preposterous website could possibly be saying about my beloved show! I so badly wanted to defend whatever they were claiming, until I realized what they were arguing was true.  This is a picture of Rachel's and Monica's apartments (two of the main characters):

This is where the six friends normally hang out, probably a little bit too much since they are all in their twenties and all (supposedly) have jobs that they love (but i'll let that slide because i love the show). Basically, what they were arguing on the website I came across was what S & C were arguing - that these producers were using these images to manipulate us, leading us to believe that these average people (people just like us! gasp) are living a better lifestyle that we are with "no monetary concerns." It doesn't just stop there though, the article claims. It says that society "shows us advertisements, compelling us to buy the lifestyle depicted in our favorite shows." 
Source: http://lifehacker.com/5824328/how-advertising-manipulates-your-choices-and-spending-habits-and-what-to-do-about-it

David M Carter, psychologist claims that this is a form of "referencing." He says that, "We reference, either intentionally or otherwise, to lifestyles represented to us (in the media or in real life) that we find attractive. We create a vision of ourselves living this idealized lifestyle, and then behave in ways that help us to realize the vision. The problem with this process is that the lifestyles most often portrayed, and ultimately referenced, are well beyond the means of all but a very small percentage of Americans. We aspire to something that the vast majority of us cannot possibly achieve. And, in this attempt to realize our aspirations, we borrow heavily, feel poorly about ourselves because we just can't seem to get there, and become addicted to a way of living that gradually and inexorably separates us from the things in life that bring us the most joy."

"Manufactured Representation of the Real"

In this week's reading of Rowe's Framed and Mounted: Sport Through the Photographic Eye, there were several aspects that he covered in which I found to extremely intriguing. In the beginning, Rowe talked about the definition of still photography, as "a form of communication that relies on the notion of 'capture', frozen for all time is a gesture, an expression, incident or landscape." With this definition, it would seem to me that still photography is capturing a real life event that couldn't possibly be altered if it is history, but Rowe begs the question of whether or not those pictures could be actually "manufactured representation of the real."

He further explains this with providing the example of a man waving a stick at a policeman, which would make for a great picture in the realm of photojournalism, but Rowe says, what if the picture was really representing something else, such as the fact that maybe it wasn't even really all that dramatic because the man may have just been waving the photographer away, something that is very plausible. With photography, I suppose you can't really make an assumption of whether or not that picture was altered a certain way without actually being there. However, with that being said, I don't know if I necessarily agree with his statement "whatever the motives of the photographer, a framed, two-dimensional image can never be 'the thing itself'"because I don't think that applies for all cases within photography.

Another aspect of this article that I found to be thought provoking was the author's comparison of sports photography and pornography. He claims that they are similar in the sense that they are "both fixated in the body, minutely examining its performative possibilities and special qualities," as well as being "concerned with arousal."

Generally, I didn't want to believe that that statement had some truth behind it, in the sense that they are both designed to provoke some sort of sexual attention, and I even went so far as to think it's almost insulting to sports photography that it can even be comparable to pornography. I decided to do some research to prove that photography and pornography were really not the same thing, that maybe it was just Sports Illustrated's Swim Suit Edition that happened to be more provocative. But then I googled ESPN's online magazine, and on google the first link lead me to the normal ESPN page with you know, pretty PG - 13 stuff, and then right below it was a link to "ESPN's Body Issue." And of course, the first thing I see on the page is that image above, which completely and utterly destroyed any and all of my argument I was going to make. Which then leads me to my next question, why on earth are humans so incredibly fixated on the human body?


Source: http://espn.go.com/espn/bodyissue

"Frozen Moments In Time"

      In light of this week's reading, I decided to explore the idea of photography ethics, as this topic was what jumped out to me the most from the reading. I found a video of The National Press Photographer Association's compilation of digital photography manipulations, and I thought it was interesting that they quoted: "As journalists we believe the guiding principle of our profession is accuracy; therefore, we believe it is wrong to alter the content of a photograph in any way that deceives the public."

    Normally, I'll admit, I love photoshop, and even the Camera Plus application on my iPhone that lets me digitally alter pictures in a way that makes it much more appealing; almost 3-D. I can even fool other people into thinking that I am a good photographer, when in reality it's photoshop and the filters that are essentially the masterminds behind the attractiveness and quality of the photograph. I do even believe that alterations of photography in some cases, aren't necessarily negative. However though, in some contexts such as war photography, I find it incredibly not only deceiving and unethical, but also a complete abuse of their job as a photojournalist. 

   As NPPA stated that their principle of profession is accuracy, I think that a photojournalists job is really to capture the story, which when done ethically and correctly can be extremely powerful. When pictures are altered such as the one below, it seems to me that they are almost in a sense manipulating history. Although that sounds incredibly dramatic for just a few differences in a photograph, I think that it is the photojournalists responsibility to report back to the rest of the world with exactly the way history presented itself in reality, because that is all the rest of us who were not at the scene of the event have to look back upon and maybe even someday use those photographs as a learning tool for other generations to come. It's also even more upsetting because the photographer who took this picture used it for his benefit to put himself higher on the photography spectrum, as the photograph ran on Page One of Times, which I would say is quite an honor. 

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/030409.htm

     I also found another article on BBC, called "How Fake Images Change Our Memory and Behavior," about how people think of memories as a transcript - basically a compilation of everything they have experienced from when they were a child to their current experiences, but in reality our memory "is far more like a desert mirage than a transcript – as we recall the past we are really just making meaning out of the flickering patterns of sights, smells and sounds we think we remember." Science has also proved through dozens and dozens of research that our memory actually is not very reliable - when we see pictures, we remember them but not necessarily all the details so when we recall things, our imagination may be filling in the gaps of what we don't remember. In the article, there was also one study done where some people were shown photographs from their childhood, along with several pictures that were photoshopped to make it look like they were doing things that didn't actually happen (i.e family on a hot air balloon), and half of the participants said that they recalled those events happening in real life, even though they didn't.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121213-fake-pictures-make-real-memories

Blogging Brands

For the first time, I found myself generally agreeing with what Rettberg had to say regarding blogging and using it as a social platform as well as for marketing and advertisements. Personally, I only really follow blogs for reading short stories or poems and such, or for baking (yay sweet tooth!) and other cooking recipes. When I read about Manolo's Shoe Blog, I began to realize how smart this blogger really is. First of all, it benefits both sides. The blogger gets recognition, giving himself a name in the industry I suppose, and it also benefits the actual Manolo designer because it will then prompt other people to buy that designer's shoes. In this sense, it's a win-win situation. Although I am not personally really into fashion, a lot of my friends are, and therefore I heard about a website called http://lookbook.nu/, which is a social networking website where people can create profiles and upload pictures of themselves in their favorite outfits for people to see. I never thought of that as an advertising mechanism but I suppose it works that way as well.

Another interesting aspect of this chapter was Dooce's blog and how she was making money off of it. It was only when she added graphical advertisements as opposed to her text advertisements that it increased her followers and income. As someone who is a visual person, I couldn't tell you why I prefer visuals over text, and I thought I would do a little research on the statistics. I found that apparently visuals are processed 60,000 times faster by the brain than by text! (Source: Hubspot) And this statistic is pretty astonishing as well : " just one month after the introduction of Facebook timeline for brands, visual content -- photos and videos -- saw a 65% increase in engagement" (Source: Hubspot) and there were many more where generally most people prefer visuals over text. 

Journalism v.s blog

Chapter 4:

       In Chapter 4, Rettberg talks about the main differences between the art of journalism and blogging. For the most part, I have never really made a connection between the two. As a person that I suppose, has somewhat grown up in the beginnings of the digital age, I always thought of journalism as being news on print, never digital. Both my parents are the type that like to be aware of what is happening in the world, and so growing up we would always have newspapers on our table and it would be passed around during breakfast. Blogging on the other hand is something that I myself have just recently become used to, that I personally use as somewhat of an online diary.

       On page 84, the author then talks about how "blogs are not journalism, nor do their writers aspire to be journalists." I don't necessarily agree with that statement and much too bold to be claiming. I actually think that in this age, for people who want to get their opinions and voices across and out there into the world but don't have the ability to actually write for an established newspaper such as New York Times or whatever, it is a great outlet for them to do so and it is also a very smart way to get noticed. Although of course it might take a longer process for someone to approach the bloggers about a potential position in journalism, I think it is still very possible that the bloggers may have that intention.
I also thought it was a very interesting point that the author made about bloggers blogging about what journalists write about, but where they "failed to investigate or was not deemed fitting." With blogging comes much more freedom, because it allows you to voice not just what your passionate about and facts and things and such, but rather it also provides the outlet to release your opinions, which in most cases journalism does not.

        In Journalism of Verification, I liked the idea of verification being the difference between blogging and journalism, and I agree with that statement much more so. Especially when the author mentions transparency  - journalists have to stick with the exact facts, and not only that, but have to verify about a million times to make sure what they're printing is true. In our own campus furman newspaper, we have a policy that if we print something wrong, in the next issue it MUST be acknowledged and printed somewhere, so I can imagine a big newspaper such as New York Times would be adamant about doing the same. Bloggers on the other hand, aren't bound to "true" facts, and don't necessarily have to prove anything to anyone either. In that case then, perhaps maybe that is why blogging is becoming so popular and journalism is deteriorating.

"Delete"

Chapter 2:      

         This week's reading made me appreciate the art of tying all the more, especially when it comes to blogging. Having grown up in I suppose, the beginning of the "digital age," I have never once thought about the simple button, "delete," that was created by a genius and put together what we now call the computer keyboard. In the last five minutes of typing this paragraph, I have already used that button about an infinite number of times. After reading this chapter, this following sentence really made me think twice about what content I should choose to put in this space; "Words should not be cast out indiscriminately, Plato argues, they should be like seeds planted carefully in a mind that is read for them, and they should be nurtured through conversation, in dialogue." - Plato. Thinking back to before the world of blogging, mass media, and rather just anything digital - I think of blogging in a more negative point of view than I used to. When there was just ink and pen, one must've had to think rather carefully before putting that onto paper. Of course, that example is much like today, I have to think extremely carefully before I jot down my answers on a test for the essay portion. However, when there the typewriter machine was invented, one small mistake could potentially make one lose so much time to have to retype everything. At least with paper, we have correction tape and things like that. 

Chapter 3:

          For the most part, I found myself actually disagreeing with what the author had to say about social networking. He seems to think that there are connections between people when they follow each others blogs. While I do agree that it is highly possible a lot of people who blog follow their friends blog, but I'm more inclined to believe that people who follow other blogs are probably following a total stranger who happens to have similar interests in them, such as fashion or sports or whatever. For most people, I feel like if they are using blogs especially to find the latest trends in fashion or electronics or whatever, they most likely aren't going to be looking at their friends blogs - rather, probably more developed blogs from maybe even older people that have more experience than they do. 

Foxnews.com Review: On the ball or Not?

What is your first impression of the site? Think of the “3 second rule.” (pg 31)

·      Looks busy – text and images all over the place, but most of the text appears really small which makes it hard to read unless you squint 

·      When you scroll down, it encourages scanning because the font is small and makes you not want to look up close in detail

·      Most of the featured articles are of entertainment, not necessarily news events happening in the grand scheme of things

How does this site establish credibility? How does it establish trust? Or does it? (pg 28-29)

Authentic voice?

Genuine?

Transparency?

·      Hard to decipher authenticity because it’s a very well-known news station source,

·      Certain articles does not feel genuine, doesn’t have reporters name

·      One or two sentences per paragraph which encourages reading

What is the general writing style?

Biased?

Objective?

·      Generally pretty objective

Does the writer IDENTIFY with his or her readers, or not? How (or why not)?

·      Author doesn’t really put their two cents into what they are writing, mostly just stating facts

Does the writing style get to the point?

·      Yes, short and concise

How is it arranged? Is it arranged in reverse pyramid style?

·      Not really, pyramid just goes from big headline to everything else in around the same

Is content shaped for scanning? How is the content layered? (p 32)

·      Yes because they’re all written in short concise paragraphs that make it easy to read, not overwhelming

·      First few sentences and headline pretty much already sums up the gist of the entire article

·      Starts with categories, which brings you to dozens of more articles within that category which you can then click on

Is the tone or rhythm of the site consistent throughout?

·      It stays pretty consistent in regards to tone because they are all spewing out facts and not really giving opinions, staying objective.

How does the site use headlines?

·      First article has a big headline that is in all capitalized font

·      Supported by a picture which gives us good information on what the article is about

·      First line is all capitalized and using very little words, with a supporting sentence underneath which I think attracts peoples attention to the article

How does it use links? Effectively or not?

·      When you click on a certain article, on the right hand side it’ll give you a list of more links to videos but they are not always relevant to the article which could be a drawback

·      It can be effective in the sense that, for example when we clicked on the pizza article link, on the right hand side it’ll give you a list of other articles within the Lifestyle category which makes it easier to navigate if you are only looking for articles in Lifestyle.

How is multimedia used? Is it distracting? How is it displayed on the site? Does the multimedia tell the same story as the text, or a different side of the story?

·      Not exactly distracting because it doesn’t pop up unless you actually intentionally click on it

·      It doesn’t always really give us a different side of the story, it seems like it follows the article, doesn’t really add anything different

How does the site “package” stories? (pg 36)

·      Doesn’t always show additional information relative to the article, only shows how many people shared it on Facebook or Twitter

·      However, certain articles will have additional links to other sources

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/05/up-to-100-cars-crash-in-pileup-on-fog-shrouded-bridge-southeast-london/?test=latestnews

How are graphics used?

Too cluttered?

Are the graphics consistent through out the site, and consistent to the brand?

Do they encourage or discourage use, and how?

·      Each article has its own picture

·      Pretty effective in the way that they structured it on the page, having it right under each of the article’s headlines

·      Graphics are quite consistent

Can each page stand on it’s own?

·      Yes, every page is pretty much formatted the same way which is very helpful and makes it look and feel organized

How is the navigation? Do you get lost? Do you always know where you are? How (or why not)?

·      Navigation is good, links (Home, Lifestyle, Video, News) on every page that allows you to return or navigate to other sections on the website you want to go which is effective and useful

How does the site incorporate/interact with its audience? How does it embody the social aspect of the internet (or does it)?

·      Gives audience a wide range of news, including events and things happening in the entertainment industry, not just politics and science and things like that.